“Never give a sword to a man who can’t dance.” – Confucius
Last night I decided that I needed to start working on actively feeling joy in my life. I’ve been meditating for 40 days, and while I am calmer and more introspective, it has not made me happier. And I wanted happiness. Joy. To feel connected and alive.
I decided to try adding a dancing practice to my mornings. I love listening to music. It moves me and shakes up my stuck emotions. And I love dancing, although I am extremely self-conscious about it, and can’t really do it publicly. So dancing privately – like in our barn – at a time when everyone else is asleep and I can feel safe that I wont be seen – seems like a good solution.
First day of my “Go for Joy” push. I woke up at 4am, did my meditation, went through a list of things I am grateful for, and then forced myself to get into a hoodie and head out to the cold dark barn. It was still total night outside, so I stopped for a bit to look at the stars and find Orion’s belt. It was cold, utterly silent, and I could feel, but not see, the still presence of our mountains in the distance. In the barn, I kept the lights off, closed the doors, and tuned into my dancing playlist.
Dancing by myself, for myself, is a lot like meditation in a way. It’s really hard. Moving to music is not natural for me. And I need to stay present, unthinking, and connected to my body, or I will lose the beat, get rigid and jerky, and then feel self conscious and stop dancing. Yes, I am alone in a dark barn at 4:30 in the morning with the doors closed… and I still feel insecure about dancing badly and looking ridiculous. It’s crazy. I agree. And I’m working on it.
Some of the same patterns keep emerging: I’ll connect with a song, move and feel great, and then thoughts come in of describing the experience to someone, or writing about it, or some cool fantasy that involves dancing, or I’ll start seeing myself from the side and judging my movements; and I am back in my mind and not in my body, and my dancing immediately goes to crap.
I have a moment of just being in my body, and having fun, and then my mind has to jump in and ruin it. I wasn’t as sensitive to this before meditating, but now I really notice this dynamic. I can’t control my mind, and it won’t let me be. It will show up uninvited and take over every experience that I might have tried to have without it.
That physical feedback is actually more raw and immediate than in meditation. When meditating, if I get lost in a daydream or a thought, I’ll still keep breathing and sitting. I’ll only notice that I lost my breathing count. But when dancing… if I start thinking or judging myself, I’ll immediately start tensing up, lose my connection to the music, and possibly stumble.
I really feel this loss on a gut level. A song takes me over, and I am dance strutting across the floor, headbanging, jazz hands out, breaking into some ungodly version of river dance for the chorus… and then I think about it and it all crashes. And I am standing panting in the dark, wondering if anyone has seen me, utterly unable to move again to the same song. It sucks… and it’s a visceral metaphor for the rest of my life.
I need a new metaphor… I don’t know if I can keep up my barn dancing practice everyday. But I am going to try. And I think it offers an interesting counterpoint to the stillness of meditation. I need to move. It’s good for my body. And I really need to work on my self-consciousness. And keep noticing how my mind keeps robbing me of these moments of joy.
And how was the dancing? The dancing was good…
